Ford Plans Air Bag Option On Some Cars Former Carter Official Says Offer Will Be 1st By U.s. Company

November 2, 1985|By Craig Crawford of The Sentinel Staff

A former Carter administration official said Friday in an Orlando speech that Ford Motor Co. will announce next week its plans to offer air bags on the driver's side of some cars as optional equipment.

Joan Claybrook, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said Ford will become ''the first American car manufacturer to make air bags available to the general public.''

Speaking to the Florida Academy of Trial Lawyers at the Buena Vista Hotel in Orlando, Claybrook said Ford's announcement is expected Monday.

''I am not in a position to comment on whether or not there will be an announcement next week,'' said Richard Judy, Ford spokesman. ''But that is not to say that something like that couldn't happen.''

A NHTSA spokeswoman, Rosalyn Kaiser, said she heard the company was planning to offer air bags on the Ford Tempo and the Mercury Topaz, but didn't know when the announcement would be made.

The expected cost is $700 to $800 per vehicle for the optional equipment.

Industry sources said the announcement will be made by Ford chairman Donald Peterson in a speech Monday to the Economics Club of Detroit.

In a related development, Mercedes-Benz, which has offered driver-side air bags on some models, announced it will put the automatic crash cushions on all its 1986 cars.

That makes Mercedes the first company to make air bags standard equipment. Claybrook, currently president of a Washington-based consumer law group called Public Citizen, said Ford's action is the culmination of several years of lobbying by consumer advocates such as Ralph Nader.

She said Nader persuaded the General Services Administration in 1982 to buy cars equipped with air bags.

Then Ford agreed to put bags on the driver's side of 5,000 1985 Tempos and sell them to the GSA, said Claybrook.

The experiment was successful, said Claybrook, and Ford currently makes the equipment available to large fleet buyers such as Travelers Insurance Company. ''Now, they're taking the next step,'' said Claybrook of Ford's plan to offer air bags to the general public.

The cost will decrease to $250 per car as the air bag manufacturers get into mass production, according to Claybrook.

For that to happen, she acknowledged, the public will have to show more interest in the equipment.

''I doubt very seriously if anybody would buy one,'' said Tom Slobodzian, general sales manager for McInerney Ford in Orlando. ''We sell nearly 3,000 new vehicles a year, and I wouldn't expect more than 50 customers to ask for air bags.''

Slobodzian hadn't heard about Ford's plan to offer the safety device to the general public, but he confirmed that air bags are available to buyers of 10 or more cars at $815 each.

Claybrook said the public has become ''too philosophical'' about car safety.

''The average person pays $1,000 or more per year for insurance, but balks at a one-time cost of $700 for an air bag,'' she said.

Calling air bags a ''technological vaccine,'' Claybrook said NHTSA studies show the equipment could save 9,000 lives and 65,000 injuries a year.

Claybrook angered car makers in 1977 when she issued an order requiring them to install air bags or automatic seat belts. The order was canceled in 1981 by the Reagan administration.

But a lawsuit brought by insurance companies over the cancellation made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and in late 1983 the court unanimously restored Claybrook's safety rule.

The court left it up to Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole to set a new deadline for the safety devices or make a renewed effort to modify the regulation.

In 1984 she announced a rule which provoked another lawsuit that is still pending in the courts.

Dole required car makers to phase-in air bags or automatic safety belts for all cars by 1990 but left the companies a way out of the requirement, said Claybrook in an interview Friday.

Claybrook explained that Dole's order also said the safety equipment would not be required if by 1989 two-thirds of the population lived in states with mandatory seat belt laws.

''That's a Hobson's choice,'' said Claybrook, who has joined other consumer advocates in a lawsuit by State Farm Insurance Co. over Dole's ruling. Insurance companies have long supported use of air bags.

Claybrook said about 50 percent of the population now lives in states with mandatory seat belt laws and the car manufacturers are lobbying heavily in the remaining states to meet the 1989 deadline.Florida has not yet passed such a law.